A brave attempt to further the cause of prison reform

Penal reform has always been a Cinderella cause in this country, and those who campaign against the appalling conditions that all too often obtain in our jails have to struggle to be heard. So it is all the more encouraging that Cherie Blair has decided to use her long experience as a humanitarian lawyer as well as her public recognition to promote this cause.

Mrs Blair has prefaced her remarks on the conditions in prisons by visiting some of Britain's most infamous jails and interviewing prisoners including drug dealers, inmates with mental health problems and young offenders. She deserves to be listened to, because what she has to say is important. She is right to try to highlight the way women prisoners are treated, an especially neglected group. Few realise, for example, that almost half of all women prisoners had children living with them before coming to prison, amounting to perhaps 10,000 children a year, most under the age of 10.

Anyone who works within the prison service will readily recognise the picture she draws of a criminal justice system that is close to breaking point.

Only the United States is fonder of trying to solve its social problems by locking people away. The thirst among politicians of both parties for retribution above all else has placed far too many offenders in these criminal institutes of further education. The numbers held on remand – many of whom will never be given a formal custodial sentence by a court – are a testimony to failure. The huge increase in prison numbers is, indeed, "crippling" the system and making rehabilitation for offenders and, in particular, treatment for drug addicts much more difficult. As Mrs Blair says: "There is little point in drying out addicts in jail only to send them unsupported back into the community. Vulnerable people leaving prison must be helped to stay away from their old patterns of life."

Without the sort of support and rehabilitation Mrs Blair talks about, there is little hope of preventing ex-prisoners from reoffending. So the crime rate rises and the prison population edges up another notch and the system moves just a little closer to collapse. That is a combustible process that ministers cannot afford to ignore.